by John Lutz
Chief Wicke was standing up behind a wide oak desk that took up most of the office. It was a messy desk. File folders were in a jumble on one corner, a dirty ashtray was poised to fall off another. A four-line phone sat on top of another stack of folders. Papers and two thick ring-binders lay near the chief, and he had one of those green felt desk pads with brown leather borders. Small slips of paper, business cards, and opened envelopes were tucked beneath the overlapping leather on each side. Chief Wicke was either a very busy or a very lazy public servant.
The chief himself was average height but wide all over, as if he’d been compressed by a great force. He might have been a long-ago high school football player too small and slow for college. His blue uniform shirt was bulging over his belt. His gold badge hung down above his shirt pocket like a flower wilted by the heat. He had a fleshy face but narrow, sharp features, as if nature had been guilty of a genetic mix-up and combined fox with fat cells. Salt and pepper hair had receded and was cut short and combed straight back. Wicke’s gray eyes were neutral yet appraising, like the eyes of the cop out at the typewriter. Like Henry Tiller’s eyes, and Carver’s, and the eyes of every cop everywhere who ever lived. Central Casting might have done worse suggesting him as the frustrated southern sheriff in one of those yokel chase comedies.
Carver introduced himself, and Wicke pumped his hand, saying, “Lloyd Wicke. I understand you’re staying up at Henry Tiller’s place.” Wicke’s eyes hadn’t so much as flicked toward Carver’s cane; he already knew things about Carver, so maybe he was more on top of his job than those yokel sheriffs in the movies. And there was no trace of a southern accent.
Carver leaned on the cane. “I’ll be there for a while,” he said.
“So how’s old Henry doing?”
“Not bad, considering. He’ll be laid up for some time, though. I’m here to look into the hit and run.” Among other things.
Chief Wicke frowned and nodded. “Hell of a turn for Henry, but I guess that’s what happens when you get old, your hearing and eyesight go bad, and you can’t see or hear a car coming at you.” He ran beefy fingers lightly across his chin, as if checking to make sure he’d shaved that morning. “Kinda problems we’re all gonna run into sooner or later.”
“That how you see it? Henry got nailed by some drunk driver who kept on going?”
“Sure. Or some variation of that. What other way is there to see it?”
“Henry thinks maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe it had to do with some suspicions he has about a neighbor of his, Walter Rainer.”
Chief Wicke chuckled and shook his head. “Now why ain’t I surprised?”
“Henry said he’d been to see you,” Carver said.
“He sure has. ’Bout a week ago. I told him he better not go around spreading such theories unless he expects to be sued. There’s no evidence Walter Rainer’s anything but just another middle-aged man with money living his Florida dream. Got himself a younger, good-looking wife, a couple of steady employees to take the load off his shoulders. So what if he does go out in his boat at night-if he does, which I doubt. Hell, he’s one of the least eccentric rich folks we got living on the island. You wouldn’t believe some of the oddball shit goes on here. Or maybe you would.” The chief squinted at Carver and leaned forward over his cluttered desk. “What exactly’d Henry tell you, Mr. Carver?”
“He wasn’t very specific. He seems to have added up everything he’s observed, and doesn’t like the total, even if he doesn’t know exactly what it is. Mainly, he figures a longtime cop can sense when something’s not what it oughta be.”
“I guess he’s right on that one, but there comes a time when that cop gets too old and too far away from the work. Listen, last thing I wanna do is bad-mouth old Henry, but my actual belief is that he’s rounded that bend, like a lotta old folks, and his imagination’s doing a job on him. It ain’t unnatural, either, for a man his age to get kinda paranoid.”
“You’d have a tough time convincing him of that.”
“Don’t I know it? What I tried was to convince him to quit spying on Walter Rainer, and to try and forget his crazy suspicions. Take up goddamn basket weaving or some such.”
“I bet he took to that suggestion with a smile.”
Chief Wicke grinned. “Well, you probably ain’t noticed any baskets around his place. He cussed a lot and then tromped outa here. Tell the truth, I don’t guess I blame him. It can’t be easy admitting the string’s about played out. Maybe working up suspicion about Walter Rainer is Henry’s way of trying to make himself meaningful.”
“Exactly who is Rainer?”
“Man about fifty, said to have made his fortune in the car business up north. Lives out on Shoreline and manages his investments. Now and again him and his wife, Lilly, come into town for dinner or what have you, though usually they pretty much keep to themselves. Rainer’s well-enough liked, or at least not disliked, and no trouble to anybody far as I can see.”
“His man Davy Mathis looks like a rough character.”
Wicke spread his hands on his desk and nodded. “Yeah, I know about Davy. Even mentioned his background to Walter Rainer, case he didn’t know. But he did know. He said he’d gotten to like and trust Davy when Davy worked for him up north, and felt he deserved a chance despite his background.”
“So he’s a humanitarian.”
Wicke’s broad but foxlike face creased in a smile. “Now you sound like Henry.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. Sorry. I’m working on not being so cynical.”
“Well, in our line of work, that ain’t easy. Which is maybe why an old cop like Henry needs a crime to look into, and the truth is, other’n tourist con games and an occasional fight, there ain’t much crime here on Key Montaigne. Maybe Henry shoulda gone back to Milwaukee or retired to the South Bronx.”
“So you didn’t do anything to investigate his suspicions?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that. I asked around a bit. Even drove up to the Rainer place and talked to Walter Rainer. He was surprised. He don’t even know Henry. I think his feelings were a little hurt; it ain’t pleasant to be suspected of God knows what. He even offered to let me search the house grounds.”
“But you didn’t.”
The chief lifted his broad shoulders helplessly. “I honestly had no reason, Mr. Carver.”
“Other than the Walter Rainer matter, is there anyone on Key Montaigne who might have reason to do Henry harm?”
“Hell, no. Ain’t nobody takes him all that serious.” Wicke rested his palms flat on his desk and faced Carver squarely. “Look, you’re making too much of this. What happened is some DWI or scared-shitless tourist accidentally ran over Henry in Miami, then panicked and fled the scene. I’ve asked Miami police to set up checks on the car rental agencies in the area, notify me if they report any suspicious damages. But you know how it is, a car can hit a human being and not sustain near as much damage as the person. All depends on how it happens.”
“You’re probably right,” Carver said, “but I owe it to Henry to ask around. Maybe, if nothing else, I can put his mind at ease.”
“I sure hope so,” the chief said. “I wouldn’t want his fixation about Rainer to run outa control, maybe prompt him to do something really foolish. Henry still got his service revolver?”
“He probably does,” Carver said.
“Great.” Wicke waved a hand. “But then, what the hell, every nut case in Florida’s got a gun, so why not Henry?”
Carver couldn’t answer that one. He thanked Chief Wicke for taking time to talk to him, then limped from the office. The curly-haired cop at the Selectric stared at him on the way out. The woman behind the desk smiled at him like a grandmother who’d just fed him cookies. Smalltown life.
It was much hotter outside. The sky was cloudless and the sun was having its way. There was a slight breeze off the ocean, but it was warm and created the effect of a convection oven. As he set the cane on the loose chat and limped back to the Olds, Carver co
uld feel the sun’s heat on his bald pate. Probably he should buy a hat.
When he got back to Henry’s cottage, he punched out Efhe’s number on the cheap digital phone. A woman answered. Effie’s mother? Carver asked if he could talk to Effie, for a moment feeling like a nervous tenth grader working up the nerve to ask for a date. “Just a minute,” the woman said suspiciously. It was more like three minutes before Effie came to the phone.
In the interest of propriety, Carver kept the conversation short. He asked Effie for the names of people on Key Montaigne who were particularly friendly with or had dealings with Henry. Sounding as enthusiastic as if he’d provided a last-chance date for the prom, she said she’d make up a list and bicycle over and give it to him.
After thanking her and hanging up on her boundless energy, he called Faith United Hospital in Miami and asked about Henry Tiller’s condition.
Satisfactory, he was told. Mr. Tiller had been on the operating table three hours while surgeons explored and treated his internal injuries. Soon he’d be able to accept brief phone calls and have visitors, but not today or tonight.
After replacing the receiver, Carver found a can of Budweiser in the back of Henry’s refrigerator and sat on the front porch, sipping beer and looking out at the sea. At the sleek white form of the docked Miss Behavin’. He thought about his conversation with Chief Wicke, who seemed a competent and sensible man with no ax to grind, though maybe something of a toady for the island’s rich residents who no doubt kept him in office, politics being politics.
Maybe the chief was right, and Henry was in the gray area between reality and the tricks advanced age played on body and mind. The place where past and present mixed with never.
The beer can was empty, and Carver was still considering Henry’s questionable instincts, when he heard bike tires crunching in the driveway and Effie pedaled into view on her weatherworn Schwinn.
8
One of the names on Effie’s list was Katia Marsh, an employee of the Oceanography Research Center. After lunch, Carver found the handful of tourist brochures he’d picked up before crossing the narrow bridge to the island. The research center had its own brochure, a slick foldout that showed a low, buff-colored building perched on the edge of the sea. There were several fenced-in areas near it that reminded Carver of enclosed tennis courts, but he saw that inside the cages of chain-link fencing were rectangular pools that must contain sea life. There was a shot of a room where various tidal-pool creatures could be observed and handled by visitors. The back wall of the room was a glass window looking in on a tank wherein a large shark swam. A dark-haired man in a white smock and a stoop-shouldered woman with a pinched nose and pointed chin were smiling and observing the observers. Carver wondered if the woman was Katia Marsh.
It took only about ten minutes to drive the Olds down Shoreline and then follow the signs to the research center. It looked exactly like its photo in the brochure, but there was also a businesslike, functional feel to the place that gave the impression it existed primarily for research, and the tourist angle was merely a side endeavor to provide financing.
Carver noticed immediately that the research center provided an almost clear view of the Rainer estate, certainly a better view than from Henry’s cottage. It was no mystery to Carver why Henry had spent time at the center and gotten to know one of its employees.
He left the Olds parked in the shade of a grouping of gigantic palm trees with their lower trunks painted white. Beyond the palms was a low buffer of what looked like old telephone poles laid out horizontally and fixed in place with heavy stakes, then a stretch of rocky soil and a wooden pier jutting out to deep green water. A dock was built perpendicular to the pier, but no boat was there. Old truck tires were lashed to the weathered wood of both pier and dock to prevent damage when hulls bumped against them.
Carver turned his back on the sea and limped through the sun’s glare to the research center. He pushed open a door that led to a cool, gray-carpeted room whose walls were lined with information charts and underwater photographs. A thirtyish couple dressed like tourists was staring at some of the photos, moving in the trancelike shuffle of people combining vacation and edification. The man was holding an infant who gazed at Carver with incredibly round, curious eyes. In the back wall was a door lettered tide pool room, please touch.
A small stuffed hammerhead shark was mounted in a glass case in the center of the room, swimming perpetually toward the door. The guy carrying the infant glanced at it, then left the woman and ambled over to stand and stare. Other than that, not much seemed to be happening here among the posters and enlarged photos of sea horses and sharks. Carver limped over and opened the door to the Tide Pool Room.
He was on a square steel landing from which half a dozen black-enameled metal steps descended to a concrete floor. The Tide Pool Room was blue-painted cinder block, the bottom half of which was below ground level. Not the usual sort of construction in southern Florida, but Carver figured it was to lend strength to the sides of the tank where the big shark swam in endless circles, eyeing the outside world with the unconcerned expression of an expert poker player with aces in the hole. What, me wanna get out and devour a couple of tourists? Naw!
The seaward wall was thick glass from top to bottom to provide a view of the shark. Lined along the other three walls were what looked like large trays on wooden legs. There were a few inches of seawater in the trays, and coral and plant life. And an assortment of creatures that might be found in the shallow reaches of the sea and in tide pools left by receding waves. Two elderly women were standing near one of the trays. They wore baggy knee-length shorts and identical blue T-shirts lettered last heterosexual virgin on key west. The larger of the two was poking an exploratory finger at the top of a starfish. The other woman was glaring with distaste at a large crablike creature that was furiously waving its antennae as if warning her to keep hands off, it had had enough of people like this for one day.
Watching this all with an expression as unreadable as the shark’s was a blond woman in her twenties, wearing a white smock like the ones in the brochure photos. But she wasn’t at all like the woman in the brochure. She was enticingly on the plump side and almost beautiful, with a squarish face, large blue eyes, and a ski-jump nose. Her blond hair was cut short and hung straight at the sides and in bangs over her wide forehead. It was a simple, convenient hairdo, just right for jumping in the water and frolicking with the dolphins, then shaking dry, but on her it seemed stylish.
She noticed Carver on the landing, smiled at him, then looked back at the tourists to make sure they didn’t hurt the starfish. Carver set the tip of his cane and descended the steel stairs. He was wearing moccasins as usual, since they had no laces to tie, and the only noise on the steps was the clunking of his cane. Down in the room now, he could hear the throbbing hum of a filter pump, or maybe simply the air-conditioning. It made him feel as if he were in a submarine.
He stood before the nearest display and stared at the largest snail he’d ever seen. The elderly woman got tired of the starfish, volunteered without being asked that she and her friend were from Canada, then left. Carver continued to stare at the snail. For all he knew, it was staring back at him.
The blond woman in the white smock said, “You can touch anything you’d like.”
He thought he’d better not touch the answer to that. He said, “Are you Katia Marsh?”
“You asking me or the sea snail?”
He turned to look at her. She was smiling. “You,” he said.
“You’re not really interested in the snail, are you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m not sure. You don’t strike me as a tourist. Or a scientist.”
“Maybe I just like French cuisine.”
She looked slightly ill but her smile stayed.
“I’m a friend of Henry Tiller.”
“Oh.” She took a small step toward him. “How is Henry?”
“He’s doing all ri
ght. He’ll be in the hospital in Miami for a while, though.”
“I want to send him a card. Can you tell me what hospital he’s in?”
Carver told her, along with the room number. She carefully wrote down the information in a spiral notebook she’d removed from one of the smock’s big square pockets. Water flowing into one of the trays made a soft trickling sound.
“Now,” she said, retracting the tip of her ballpoint pen and slipping it and the notebook back in the pocket, “you’re Fred Carver.”
“How’d you know?”
“Word gets around Key Montaigne in a hurry.” Behind her the shark was circling, circling, easily ten feet long, and streamlined and deadly. “You’re staying at Henry’s cottage.”
“Sort of house-sitting,” Carver said.
“I thought you were investigating the hit and run.”
“My, my, word really does get around.” He used his cane to point to the circling shark. “Doesn’t he ever rest?”
“No,” Katiasaid, “they never stop swimming. If they do, they drown.”
“Drown?”
“The water forced through their system by their forward motion is what provides their oxygen.”
“Interesting.”
She brightened. “Really?”
“Sure. I know people who can only breathe during forward motion.”
She cocked her head and looked him up and down as if he were interesting sea life. Her gaze snagged for a moment on the cane and stiff leg, then moved on. “Would you like me to give you the tour?”
“That’s why I came here,” Carver said.
She smiled in a way that let him know she didn’t believe that for one second.
She stood next to him and they moved along the displays while she identified each sea creature, some of them by their Latin names. Most of them she merely pointed to, but a few she picked up so Carver could view them more closely, or look at their undersides.